


To Be Your Harbor

by deandratb



Series: Distant Horizons and Familiar Shores [1]
Category: The West Wing
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Mild Hurt/Comfort, this is my first in this genre and i really have no idea if it's any good eep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-19
Updated: 2017-09-19
Packaged: 2018-12-31 12:09:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12132189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deandratb/pseuds/deandratb
Summary: Prompt fic; The first time Josh showed up drunk at Donna's apartment. The tags are important on this one.“Couldn’t remember where I lived.” "That’s probably because you never go home.”





	To Be Your Harbor

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimed. Anonymous prompt: **hurt/comfort, preferably Josh being comforted**

When Donna answered the bell, Josh lurched through her doorway, stumbling into the wall with an audible thud. The mugs on the wall rattled as he over-corrected, hitting the archway of her tiny apartment’s dining nook.

She winced. “Toby said the guys were gonna take care of you tonight.”

“They put me in a taxi,” Josh told the ceiling. He was squinting at the ceiling fan as though it held the secrets of the universe. 

“Forgot to give an address, and when he asked me…nothin’ there.” Josh waved vaguely near his head. “Couldn’t remember where I lived.” 

“That’s probably because you never go home.” 

“But I remembered where you do.” 

Donna didn’t know what to say to that, because she had no idea what it signified. She chose to skip over it.

“Is the taxi still down there? I can give them your address.” She frowned, watching him meander further toward the living room. “Or not…I’m not sure you’d make it out of the cab like this.”

“I’m fine. Takes a lot to knock me off my game.”

“Josh, you have no game. Whenever you go over a couple of beers, your central nervous system reacts like a college freshman pledging a sorority–it’s ridiculous.”

“Says the farmgirl who drinks whiskey,” Josh shot back, plopping down onto her roommate’s couch.

Okay, that one stung a little, Donna was forced to admit. But she understood his need to poke at her–shoot the messenger and all that.

“You’re going to have to stay here,” she decided, before she could think better of it. Really, what other choice did she have? The numbing power of alcohol had been Plan A, but it wouldn’t last forever and he was going to feel even worse when it wore off.

“Hmm?” He was already slumped at her side, leaving her with the awkward conundrum of whether she should be trying to make him more comfortable. _Shoes off, or bed instead of couch? What was the protocol when you were trying to console your boss after the death of a parent? Where was the line?_

He reached for her hand and held on, even as his eyes drifted shut. “I’m good here,” Josh said, as though he knew what she’d been thinking. “S’okay.”

When his brown eyes opened again, she wasn’t ready for the naked vulnerability in them. “Just…stay with me?”

Whatever the line was, she was pretty sure they’d already crossed it.

“Yes, I can stay,” she told him, after a heavy pause that she pretended wasn’t significant. Moving to the floor, Donna nudged his knee with her shoulder. “Lay down.”

Josh stretched out awkwardly, still holding her hand like an anchor, nose brushing her hair as he moved.

“You smell good.”

She rolled her eyes. Coming from someone else, that would be a line. But Josh had no game in that area either. He was too sincere underneath the swagger. 

“Thanks.” She patted the hand holding hers. “Sleep now. It'll help.”

“‘Kay.” 

As the quiet wrapped around them, Donna listened to him breathe and admitted to herself that this was out of her league. Her parents--even her grandparents--were alive and well. She couldn’t imagine what he was going through, especially with his father’s death so wrapped up in the campaign.

Honestly, she’d been relieved when Toby and Sam had declared Josh their responsibility for the night. _They must be better able to help him._ And yet here he was, as though even half-unconscious he knew something she didn’t.

His fingers relaxed, then twitched in hers. She assumed he was asleep until he broke her pensive silence. “Donna?”

“Yes?”

“My father would have been proud of me,” he said into the couch cushion where his face was smushed. His muffled sorrow broke her heart.

“He would’ve been.” She leaned back to rest her cheek against his arm. “Josh, you know he already was. That’s not even a question.”

Noah Lyman was an abstract concept for her, a voice on the phone that sounded like Josh three decades older and without a campaign weighing on him. He had always been jovial and kind, though it was Josh’s mother who did most of the calling. She was the one who made the plans and talked to her son’s new assistant as though she was now a member of the family. 

But when Noah did call, his love for Josh always leaked through. She could hear it, as plainly as the worry in her own father’s voice when Donna called home and reassured him that her new job was working out, that she was happy, that she was better off.

"He promised to come to the Inauguration. He was that sure we're gonna win." Josh sighed. "Nobody could get him to stop yelling at the squirrels."

"Oh, Josh." Donna squeezed her eyes shut, willing back the sympathetic tears that wanted to fall. There was nothing that would actually make him feel better--at best, she could offer him a reprieve.

"I'm right here," she promised him. "Just rest."

Josh released her fingers, swatting away the cat that brushed its tail over his ear. "Thanks," he said faintly, before shifting to lay his head against her shoulder and dropping into sleep like a stone.

As her boss began to snore behind her, Donna grinned at the absurdity of it all.

She really was better off here.

**Author's Note:**

> Title borrowed from "Harbor" by Vienna Teng. I may write a happier morning-after sequel to this one.


End file.
